


v5 



7 • &? > 



*T». 






■ » 



"^ 




































P M 



.vV^ 









** 















•: 



,V> 






























%0-y> 



o \^^ 



^6 






y.* J \ 







. -,, Trr ,' . 



° -<* * v ^\ V*° .«^K- %.,/ 4 






r oK 



5°^ 















► ar ^ o VJIaf * -«? °c^ • raffs* * *y ^s 



,* ti'^i.% <v c° .<J^% '°o ^ *i^*, "* 




A cu -V 5 





\ *** t •< 



^^ 



XP 


















*t> *•«• <T 



V * 









& o i • * 



• K/ 



^ . V ^ 






0° 



tt. 








aP 





o • t 



'- *A < •' 



.^% 









vv 



^VP, 



• JC «e^w* o 



r/^*"^ :y^: j?^ 













B a|V 



*bK 






A 



>\ N 






^ 0v ^ -3 












A VINDICATION 



<>!•' TIIK 






HON. AUGUSTIN S. CLAYTON, 



r 



AUAINST THK ASPERSIONS OF 



GEORGE R. GILMER, 



AS CONTAINED IN HIS 



SKETCHES OF GEORGIA 



T. C e ot ^ o y-» 



WASHINGTON: 

G. S. GIDEON, PRINTER. 
1855. 






VINDICATION. 



0»» 



9- 
CD 



To the People of Georgia. 

The reputation of your public men, who have 
served you in the council or the field, is a common 
heritage, and I claim the privilege of vindicating the 
character of one whose memory is cherished with 
affection, and whose virtues are a never-failing source 
of admiration. In the exercise of this right I feel 
that I am doing justice alike to the living and the 
dead. I scorn to plead the sanctified immunities of 
the grave; I ask no indulgence to the feelings of 
those who survive; [ challenge the strictest scrutiny 
into his every act, whether official or private; I ap- 
peal to his cotemporaries at the bar or in the councils 
of the nation, to speak out, if they know any thing 
which attaches to his fame, and I call up the records 
to protect the consistency of his character and the 
integrity of his life. 

I have had placed in my hands a book entitled 
"Sketches of some of the First Settlers of Upper 
Georgia, of the Cherokees, and the Author," by 
George R. Gilmer, containing, among other things, a 
wilful, wanton, and malignant attack upon the charac- 
ter and integrity of Judge Clayton. It is my purpose in 
this vindication to show the meanness of the assassin 
and the misrepresentations to which he has resorted. 
As to the book I have but little to say; and if the author 



had confined himself to telling that his wife ;t gave him 
a salutation worth more than all the shaking of hands 
and plaudits which he had received from the listeners 
and lookers-on" when he made a speech in Congress, 
with which he himself was very much pleased; or how 
"Mr Adams took occasion to speak of him in the most 
flattering terms, when he took out his great-grand- 
father's watch, and held it up to the Speaker, and 
bowed out of the hall of the House of Representatives," 
and announced that his right of representing the peo- 
ple of Georgia had terminated ; or of the " mocking- 
bird that flew against his window " when everybody 
thought he was going to die ; or to the collection of 
" minerals, Indian pipes, idols, amulets, lances, and 
arrow-heads" which adorn his domicil — it would have 
passed as the innocent garrulity of an old man with- 
out the benefit of experience. But as he has thought 
to assail and impugn the motives of others, he must 
bear the consequences which truth and justice exact 
in their defence. 

His attack upon Judge Clayton is three-fold: first, 
his intelligence as a lawyer; second, he endeavors 
to create the impression that, in his judicial char- 
acter, when the controversy between the Cherokees 
and the State of Georgia was being discussed, he fa- 
vored the General Government, and not the State; 
and thirdly, he insinuates that his mind was influenced 
to this course by the relationship which existed be- 
tween him and Mr. Wirt, who was the attorney of the 
Cherokees before the Supreme Court of the United 
States. As to the first, I have no disposition to dis- 
cuss in this controversy other than incidental ; with re- 



irard to the last two, I will show to the satisfaction of 
every honest man their utter and complete futility. 

To have a proper understanding of the points, it will 
be well to state that, while Mr. Gilmer was governor 
of Georgia, he received some time in the month of 
June, 1830, a letter from Wm. Wirt, informing him 
that " the Cherokee nation had consulted him profes- 
sionally as to their rights under their various treaties 
. with the United States, and, among other questions, 
whether the State of Georgia had a right to extend 
her laws compulsively into their nation ; and suggest- 
ing to his excellency that " the decision may be ex- 
pedited by making a case by consent, if that course 
should suit the views of the State of Georgia." The 
governor declined, without expressing much indig- 
nation or exhibiting much courtesy, the proposition, 
which he thought proceeded from dishonorable mo- 
tives. That 1 may do him justice, I give his own 
words: "No one knows better than yourself that the 
governor would grossly violate his duty and exceed 
his authority by complying with such a suggestion, 
and that both the letter and the spirit of the powers 
conferred by the Constitution upon the Supreme Court 
forbid its adjudging such a case." All this happened 
in 1830; in 1854, the same year with the publication 
of Barnum's Biography, his biography appears, and in- 
forms us that he u never felt so indignant as he did 
upon reading Mr. Wirt's letter." To understand why, 
he gives the following reasons, page 351 of his book : 
" Mr. Wirt's first wife was my kinswoman, the 
daughter of Dr. George Gilmer, of Albemarle, the 
brother of my grandfather. Mr. Wirt was poor, un- 



known, and undistinguished, when Dr. Gilmer took 
him into his house, gave him his daughter, and intro- 
duced him into the society of his friends — then the 
best in that part of the country of his residence. Soon 
after the death of his first wife, Mr. Wirt removed to 
Richmond, and then to Norfolk, and was in danger of 
being utterly ruined by dissipation, when he again 
prospered by marrying the daughter of Col. Gamble, 
of Richmond, my wife's first cousin. My wife lived . 
with Mr. Wirt's family in Richmond when she was a 
little girl going to school. Mr. Wirt had been so great 
a favorite with my own family friends, that he was 
named for his executor by my grandfather Gilmer. His 
niece, a young lady who had resided with him during 
the life of his first wife, was, after Dr. Gilmer's death, 
taken into his house by my wife's father, Mr. G rattan, 
with whom she remained until her marriage with Mr. 
Dabney Minor. All these circumstances induced me 
to believe that Mr. Wirt expected that his age, high 
standing, and intimate relationship with my family 
friends, would induce me to do at his request what I 
would refuse to another. A fee of twenty thousand 
dollars was certainly a very urgent inducement to 
every means of success." 

I pass over the fact, that while he considered a dis- 
honorable proposition had been made to him upon the 
presumption that they were of the same family, and 
that he never felt so indignant in his life at receiving 
the letter, not one word of indignation is expressed in 
his answer. I refer to this passage in his biography to 
show how low that man's mind must be who would sus- 
pect that Mr. Wirt was governed by such considera- 



tions in making the proposition he did. There had 
been nothing in the past history of Mr. Wirt's life to 
excite the least suspicion of dishonor ; the guilt might 
have been somewhere else. "All things appear yellow 
to the jaundiced eye." 

About twenty days after Mr. Wirt's letter was re- 
ceived, Mr. Gilmer addressed a letter to the Hon. 
Augustin S. Clayton, who was then judge of the 
western circuit, informing him that he had received a 
formal notice from a very distinguished lawyer of 
Maryland that he was counsel for the Cherokee In- 
dians, and giving the contents of Mr. Wirt's letter, 
without mentioning his name. This letter is found in 
his book, page 356, and, strange to say, he omits to 
publish Judge C.'s answer. My distance from Geor- 
gia prevents me from giving the same, though I am 
able to supply what I have no doubt was the purport 
of it from another document. He informs the judge 
in said letter, dated July 6th, 1830, that " I am induced 
to write thus freely and fully, because it is understood 
in Washington city that you are desirous that the 
Federal court should assume the jurisdiction of deter- 
mining the extent of the right of the State to govern 
its Indian population;" and then continues in his book: 
"Judge Clayton, to whom this letter was addressed, 
was related by marriage to Mr. Wirt in several ways, 
and his association with Mr. Wirt and his family very 
intimate." In this letter, and the subsequent state- 
ment, there are two misrepresentations on which to 
build his calumny ; first, that he, Judge Clayton, was 
desirous of submitting the question to the adjudica- 
tion of the Federal court ; and secondly, that his asso- 



8 

ciation with Mr. Wirt and family were very intimate. 
No man in Georgia, I assert without the fear of suc- 
cessful contradiction, can point to a syllable ever writ- 
ten, or a word over uttered, that Judge Clayton ever 
desired any such thing. All his writings prove the 
contrary; perhaps no man in Georgia ever contended 
more strenuously for the rights of the States, or was 
more jealous of the assumptions of the Federal Gov- 
vernment. As to his intimacy with Mr. Wirt's family, 
my recollection is, that up to this time he had never 
seen any member of it, including Mr. Wirt himself. 
In his Atticus he had animadverted with some severi- 
ty upon his conduct; besides, he was the warm per- 
sonal and political friend of Mr. Crawford in the con- 
troversy with Mr. Calhoun, wherein Mr. Wirt was on 
the other side; and in an article published in the 
Georgia Journal of April 21st, 1831, signed A. B., he 
spoke of Mr. Wirt in such manner, as one of the wit- 
nesses against Mr. Crawford, as to show that his as- 
sociations with him and his family could not have been 
intimate. But why this reference to the relationship 
of Mr. Wirt in this connection ? Does he intend to 
insinuate that his judicial decisions were biased by any 
such consideration? He can mean nothing else; and 
none but a low, mean, debased heart alone could have 
justified such a conclusion. 

Let us see how far the charge of a desire on the 
part of Judge Clayton to submit the question to the 
arbitrament of the supreme court is sustained by the 
records. In August following this letter, in a charge 
to the grand jury of Clark county, he holds this lan- 
guage: 



u Besides the fact officially announced in the council 
of the Indians lately assembled, I have received infor- 
mation from the Executive branch of this Government, 
that counsel have been employed by the Cherokee na- 
tion to raise for the adjudication of the Supreme Court 
of the United States the question, 'whether the State 
has a right to pass laws for the government of the In- 
dians residing within its limits.' Now, without intend- 
ing the least disrespect to that court, to whose consti- 
tutional authority this and all other State courts will, I 
hope, cheerfully submit, this question can never go from 
a court in which I preside until the people of the State 
yield it, either from a conviction of error, ascertained 
by their own tribunals, or the more awful sense of their 
weakness to retain it; and it is useless to disguise the 
matter — to this issue the question must come, if the 
State is true to itself." Again, in another part of the 
same charge, he says : " So long, however, as the law 
remains unrepealed, the country has my solemn pledge 
that it shall be faithfully and impartially administered, 
so far as I am concerned. I only require the aid of 
public opinion, and the arm of the executive authority, 
and no court on earth besides our own shall ever be 
troubled with this question." 

How malicious then is the allegation, and how bad- 
ly sustained by the records. I will venture to say that 
not a contemporary of Judge Clayton heard that he 
desired to let this question go before the Supreme 
Court of the United States ; and from the low insinua- 
tion, that he was influenced by his relationship with 
Mr. Wirt, T am justified in believing that it originated 
in the brain of George K. Gilmer. 
2 



10 

Again, at page 388 of this biography, we have a 
repetition of the calumny: 

" By a clause of the law all agents of the United 
States were exempted from its operation. The judge 
of one of the circuits which included the Cherokee 
territory, the relative of Mr. Wirt, imagined that he 
had read somewhere that missionaries anions: the 
Cherokees were agents of the Government. He dis- 
charged several missionaries who were brought be- 
fore him upon a writ of habeas corpus, upon his own 
assumption that missionaries were agents of the Uni- 
ted States Government, and therefore exempt by law 
from arrest.*' 

He has again to resort to misrepresentation to keep 
up the calumny, without the sagacity this time to per- 
ceive that the decision was prejudicial to the interest 
of his relative; for if the missionaries were discharged 
the case could not go to the supreme court; and unless 
it went to the supreme court, Mr. Wirt would not get 
the fee of twenty thousand dollars, which Mr. Gilmer 
in his book says " was certainly a very urgent induce- 
ment to evert/ means of success." 

One would suppose, from his assertion, that the- 
court had assumed that the missionary was the agent 
of the Government, without any evidence to establish 
the fact. At the March term of Gwinnet superior court, 
1831, Worcester and others were brought before the 
court upon a habeas corpus, charged with violating the 
law of Georgia which prevented all white persons from 
residing within the limits of the Cherokee nation with- 
out taking an oath to support and defend the constitu- 
tion and laws of the State of Georgia, ft is useless to 



11 

quote more of the opinion of the court than is neces- 
sary to show that there was evidence indicating that 
these missionaries were agents of the General Govern- 
ment. The extract runs thus: "Under all the fore- 
going views of the subject, I am of the opinion that 
the law is perfectly constitutional, and that its provi- 
sions must be carried into effect. But there is one 
provision in it which two of the individuals in custody 
seem, for reasons best known to themselves, to have 
overlooked, and which will discharge them from their 
present arrest, if I have been correctly informed as to 
the facts. Both of them are missionaries, and one of 
them a postmaster. In the first character they are 
there with the consent of the General Government, 
and, as its agents, are in the nation for the purpose of 
civilizing and christianizing the Indians; and as evi- 
dence of their being Government agents, they have 
the disbursement of large sums of public money for 
the aforesaid objects." Subsequent to this, this same 
Worcester and eleven others were convicted and sent 
to the penitentiary, Judge Clayton presiding; and yet 
Mr. Gilmer in his book omits to mention the fact that 
the "judge of one of the circuits which included the 
Cherokee Territory, the relative of Mr. Wirt, presided 
on the occasion. 

It will thus be observed, mat if he, the judge, had 
been correctly informed as to the facts, they were both 
of them agents of the General Government, and dis- 
bursed large sums of money in their public capacity; 
and yet Mr. Gilmer prints it in a book that he dis- 
charged these men upon his own assumption that 
missionaries were agents of the United States. If this 



12 

were so, why is the fact referred to in the opinion 
that they disbursed public funds? I have no means of 
coming at the testimony, except from the opinion of 
the court, and such is the vigilance of the legal fra- 
ternity that it is unreasonable to suppose that they 
would have permitted such a statement to go uncon- 
tradicted. It is, therefore, not to be expected that 
justice could or would be done either to the acts or 
motives of Judge Clayton by one who is so gratuitous 
in his assertions. 

Besides the positive assertion to the contrary in his 
charge to the grand jury of Clark county, (an extract 
from which I have quoted above,) that no other court 
had or should have the jurisdiction of the question as 
long as he had the honor to preside, the whole pre- 
vious life and writings of Judge Clayton stamp the al- 
legation with impossibility. He had contended, upon 
every occasion, as a member of the legislature, as a 
judge on t\*e bench, in his political essays, and in his 
public speeches, for the rights of Georgia in this con- 
troversy. It 13 not saying too much to assert as my 
firm belief, that he had written more than any other 
ten men in Georgia in vindication of her rights in the 
controversy with the General Government in regard 
to her Indian relations, and yet George R. Gilmer, 
who was his enemy when he was in life, endeavors to 
leave behind as history the assumption that his lean- 
ings were against his native State, and in favor of the 
United States. The bare mention of the fact, with- 
out a comment, should be sufficient to bring to any 
human face a blush, where there was a heart which 
had the sensibility to feel. And then, too, the insin- 



13 

uation that he was influenced by his relationship to 
the distinguished Wirt, who was the attorney of the 
Indians before the Supreme Court of the United 
States, betrays a low, base, degraded meanness, to 
which falsehood could be no addition. To the con- 
temporaries of Judge Clayton, it would have been 
only sufficient to have announced that George R. 
Gilmer had printed a book, and published as matter 
of history these things against him; but for the benefit 
of the rising generation, who are not familiar with the 
history of Georgia at this time, I have felt it my duty 
to be more elaborate than I otherwise would. I have, 
I think, shown the utter improbability of the truth of 
either assumption by his accuser, and prove from the 
records, that upon every occasion where he rises 
above an insinuation and attempts to assert a fact, he 
is not sustained. One word as to the assertion that 
Judge Clayton's associations with Mr. Wirt and family 
were very intimate, and I am done. According to 
the best of my recollection, Judge Clayton never saw 
Mr. Wirt, or any member of his family, until after he 
took his seat in Congress in January, 1832, when his 
duties as judge had necessarily ceased. I do not 
now remember that Mr. Wirt was ever in Athens, 
Georgia, in his life, and I am certain that his relative, 
the judge of the western circuit, was never at his 
house, unless it was after January, 1832. I will go 
one step farther. I do not now remember that Judge 
Clayton ever wrote a letter to, or received one from, 
Mr. Wirt in his life, and my confidential relations 
with him were such that I would have known some- 
thing of it, if there had existed anything like intimacy 



14 

between them. What occurred, after he was elected 
to Congress, here in Washington city, in receiving 
and returning the civilities and courtesies of life, I 
know not; they may have been intimate, but it was 
subsequent to the judicial action against which Mr. 
Gilmer has made his misrepresentations and directed 
his insinuations. I do not give importance to the 
assertion that he was intimate with Mr. Wirt and his 
family, because I attach any impropriety to it if the 
fact existed, but to show the utter unworthiness of 
what is intended as history, when it is written to 
gratify a personal revenge or is the offspring of disap- 
pointed ambition. 

There are many other remarks in Mr. Gilmer's 
book relative to Judge Clayton which I deem it unne- 
cessary to notice. Suffice it, he never speaks of him 
in respectful terms, of which I make no complaint; he 
had the right to consult his own taste in writing his 
own book, and I am not disposed to deprive him of a 
solitary enjoyment he derives therefrom. 

In this communication I have not appeared before 
the public to praise Judge Clayton — I come to defend 
him; and in this connection it will not be considered 
inappropriate to refer briefly to the cause which sep- 
arated him and Mr. Gilmer from those relations which 
existed prior to the controversy about which I am 
going to speak. The cause of difference was not any 
of the cases I have referred to above; there was no 
conflict between the executive or the judiciary of 
Georgia, in either the case of Tassels, the Indian who 
was hung for murder, or the missionaries who were 
first discharged as coming under the provision which 



15 

exempted the United States agents from the operation 
of the law, or those who were afterwards sent to the 
penitentiary, having no right to claim such exemption. 
The collision was on account of the decision of the 
judge in the case of Canatoo, a Cherokee Indian 
charged with digging gold in his own nation, which 
the legislature of Georgia had made a penitentiary 
offence. The ground upon which that decision was 
made and the Indian released, was, that the law was 
unconstitutional and violated numerous treaties made 
with the Indians, and expressly guarantying the undis- 
turbed possession and occupancy of all their lands 
not ceded to the whites. I am not going to argue the 
correctness o/ that decision ; at no very distant day 
I contemplate presenting to the public the life and 
writings of its author, at which time I trust 1 shall be 
able to do justice to the legal ability by which it was 
sustained. My present purpose is to appeal to the 
public, and in that public to include his worst enemy, 
George R. Gilmer, to know if Judge Clayton did not 
deserve, in what was intended as a history of the con- 
troversy at that time, to have had justice meted out 
to his motives. What are the facts? Mr. Gilmer and 
he belonged to the same political party; they had been 
personal friends; every inducement upon earth, save 
tin; conscientious discharge of duty, existed whv a 
contrary decision should have been made. His own 
political friends had passed the law; he in common 
with every citizen of Georgia was anxious to have the 
Indians removed to the west of the Mississippi; his 
decision he knew must have the effect to embarrass 
that hoped-for object; the discovery of gold had phren- 



16 

zied the people, and all were solicitous for an occu- 
pancy of the Territory; his re-election or defeat as 
judge was within sixty days of the time; there was not 
the possibility of a personal benefit to him or his 
friends by discharging the Indian, and yet, in the face 
of all these difficulties, he did nothing more than what 
he conceived to be his duty. For all which I do not 
claim for him any credit, but I do think, that when 
the true history is written he should be exempt 
from censure. The sequel was as every one pre- 
dicted — the legislature refused to re-elect him judge, 
though the people elected him to Congress in less 
than sixty days thereafter. Mr. Gilmer was defeated 
for governor about the same time, haying rendered 
himself obnoxious to the people of the State. It had 
the effect upon him of hydrophobia, from which he 
has never recovered. He has been snapping and 
snarling at everv successful statesman and every polit- 
ical organization in the State ever since; the clear and 
pellucid stream of charity throws him into convulsions, 
and he will soon pass away unwept, unhonored, and 
unsung, with the melancholy remembrance that the 
only true services he has ever rendered his country or 
his kind are his omissions. 

In speaking of political parties subsequent to the 
time of which I have been writing, Mr. Gilmer, at 
page 465 of his book, has the following passage: "A 
few days after my return home, (from the Anti-Tariff 
Convention at Milledgeville,) I received a letter from 
James Liddell, a leading member of the legislature, 
in which he stated that he had heard a portion of my 
remarks against the doctrine of nullification; that he 



17 

did not understand the subject, wished to be informed, 
and asked me to give him my views fully, saying that 
my letter should be strictly confidential. I wrote to 
him what my opinions were about the resolutions 
which had been adopted by the convention, particu- 
larly that which set forth the extreme opinions of Mr. 
Calhoun of the power of a State to control the legis- 
lation of Congress on the subject of the tariff, stating 
to him that they were given to himself, and not for 
others or the public. I was thus cautious, because I 
wished to avoid writing any thing against my party 
friends. I kept a copy of my letter. When the Demo- 
cratic State-Rights party were about selecting a candi- 
date for governor in 1837, those who were opposed 
to my being a candidate, and desirous that Judge 
Clayton should be, obtained a mutilated copy of my 
letter to Liddell, and used it to excite the nullifiers 
into opposition to my nomination. I was in Virginia 
whilst this intrigue was going on. Upon being in- 
formed of it, I wrote to Liddell that I had heard of 
his having communicated to others the contents of 
my letter, and asked him to send me a copy. The 
sorry fellow, having no suspicion that I had kept a 
copy, answered that he thought the letter did me 
great honor, sent a copy of the part which he knew 
to be offensive to the nullifiers, and omitted that which 
qualified what made it so, averring that his eyes were 
so sore, and he so unwell, that it was as much as he 
could do to copy what he sent. I afterwards saw 

Judge Clayton and General Harris, who had been 
3 



18 

very busy circulating LiddelFs mutilated copy of my 
letter; showed them the entire copy, and convinced 
them that they had been misled." 

Where no records exist to substantiate facts, we 
are dependent entirely upon recollection ; and while I 
would not say that Mr. Gilmer, in this narrative, has 
suggested an untruth, I have no idea that he has given 
all the facts as they existed at the time. My recol- 
lection of the facts are these: On account of Mr. Gil- 
mer's position, which was a perfect willingness to re- 
ceive favors from the State-Rights party, while at 
the same time he was denouncing their principles to 
their opponents in letters, around which he threw the 
sanctity of privacy, many State-Rights men deter- 
mined not to support bin?. 

While he and his friends were very anxious to se- 
cure the nomination of the State-Rights party, or per- 
haps it was after he had been nominated, the letter to 
Liddell was produced, to which he gave a meaning 
and signification that removed some of the objections 
which had been urged against him. Judge Clayton 
or his friends had nothing to do with any intrigue to 
defeat his nomination, or procure or circulate any 
mutilated letter for any such purpose. My opinion is, 
that a correspondence took place between Mr. Gilmer 
and General Harris at the time, which 1 have no 
doubt would have thrown more light on the subject 
than Mr. Gilmer was willing should meet the public 
gaze. 

I have one other extract to notice in his book, and 
I conclude. At page 485 he says: 



19 

"I was opposed to rechartering the Bank, and yet 
did not approve of the means used by General Jackson 
for putting it down. The Georgia members of Con- 
gress who had been elected on the same ticket with 
myself were favorable to the Bank, and partisan op- 
ponents of General Jackson. " 

This refers to the Congress of 1833-'4, at which 
time the Hons. Roger L. Gamble, Seaborn Jones, 
Thomas F. Foster, Richard H. Wilde, Augustin S. 
Clayton, and, if I mistake not, James M. Wayne, 
were elected with Mr. Gilmer upon the same ticket ; 
and by reference to pages 483-'4 of House Journal 
for the first session of the 23d Congress, it will be 
perceived — with the exception of Mr. Wilde, who 
voted for the Bank, and Mr. Gamble, who was ab- 
sent — the rest voted with Mr. Gilmer against the 
Bank. Why this misrepresentation in a book that 
purports to be history, I am at a loss to understand. 

I have said nothing of his book in relation either to 
the credit it will reflect upon the State, the informa- 
tion it gives, or the place it will occupy in the world 
as a literary production. I have not sought a con- 
troversy, and therefore I have avoided every thing like 
attack. Besides, I should be justly chargeable with 
more than an ordinary malignity to subject his book 
and his taste to the rules of criticism ; as it is, I have 
no defence against the unkindness of directing pub- 
lic attention to it. The misrepresentations which 
abound in his "Sketches," when and where he speaks 
of the acts and motives of other men, are so common 
and so frequent, that I have the charity to grant him 



20 



the benefit of the habit, to rescue his own character 
from the infamy into which his autobiography has 

plUI,ged,t P.CLAYTON. 



Washington city, January 23. 1855. 



89 f 



• • • 












• o. 



a 






V*0 V 






<6 









^ 






.^ 



o ° " ° •» ^b a* ■ "*a /.o o ° " • ♦ & . 



•s» \\ c\\\ 55 k //>i „ . \N 



<► 



\ 






° 






r ^ ^, ->^ . 



•Jfe'' -'SSI''-- % : 



4 

i 






c -4^ % ° ^ Safe: \ c, .^i* °o ^ 






* Lillys <* <& * MsaA "^o & 





















-AT . • fc ' 

1 *>/^ 



jP-7* 






If/; 



. . s * Z 1 






•X 



j^ 1 






^ U c 

1/ • . 






•-■ •*' ^ 









4* 







^ 




V 9 -^ 






















<!\» *o • » 






3-71 



^ 



WERT BOOKB^^fi 

1 Ago ^ i' ^fev V.** :^S&% ^< 



o > 






